It's not cheap to make big blockbuster TV series and movies - I know that. However, that hasn't stopped my jaw from hitting the floor when I heard that the first season of The Lord Of The Rings series by Amazon, is costing the company a massive $465 million USD. That's a phenomenal amount of cash to be spending on one season of a show that could, in theory, flop if it's not any good.
The news comes from The Hollywood Reporter and Morning Report, as the New Zealand minister for economic development and tourism mentioned how much Amazon was spending on the series. The line from the original report quotes Stuart Nash saying "What I can tell you is Amazon is going to spend about $650 million (NZ) in season one alone. This is fantastic, it really is... This will be the largest television series ever made."
Wow, "the largest television series ever made" is a huge claim for anyone to be making about the series when we haven't even got a proper trailer yet. It sounds like with the absence of Game of Thrones which ruled fantasy television for years, there is a market space open for a show we all obsess over for several years, right?
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As The Hollywood Reporter observes though, a season of Game of Thrones would cost about $100 million to create. That's still a huge amount of money of course, but quadrupling that for another show makes my brain explode imagining the potential. What will the show look like when it's completed?
The only information we've had on the Amazon series for a while has been a mysterious casting change after something wasn't working out with a main character. We have no idea what that meant for the story of the show, but it seems the final product is still in a state of flux. It really seems that Amazon is giving its all to making this a success and we'll happily wait to see if they have spent nearly half a billion wisely.
Topics: News, The Lord Of The Rings